Birth Injury Compensation: How Much Can We Claim for Our Child in New York State?

The birth of a child should be a moment of pure joy, but for some families, it becomes a heartbreaking nightmare. When a medical mistake during labor or delivery leaves a newborn with serious injuries, the emotional and financial toll can be overwhelming. Parents are left facing a lifetime of medical treatments, therapy, and uncertainty — wondering how they will afford the care their child desperately needs.

While some readers may be looking for a birth injury compensation calculator, no single formula can determine the exact amount. The best way to learn about compensation for a birth injury is to talk to our experienced New York birth injury lawyers. You’ll get honest answers to understand your legal options and maximize your child’s claim.

What Is a Birth Injury Claim?

A birth injury claim is when parents seek justice and financial support when medical negligence harms their child during birth. While compensation cannot erase what happened, it provides essential resources for raising a child with special needs.

To succeed in this type of claim, parents must prove that a healthcare provider's action or inaction caused their baby's injury and violated the standard of care, according to New York Public Health Law §2805-d.

Birth Injury Settlement in New York

Our legal team is committed to securing above-average birth injury compensation amounts for our clients, ensuring families receive the maximum financial support needed for medical care, therapy, and a secure future.

Am I Eligible to File a Claim for My Child’s Birth Injury?

If your child suffered a birth injury caused by a healthcare provider’s negligence, you may be eligible to file a birth injury claim. Negligence is more than a mere mistake. Negligence is an error or action that no reasonable healthcare provider would ever make.

To truly know whether you have a valid birth injury claim, you must speak with our seasoned birth injury attorneys. They can review the facts and discuss your options with you for filing a claim.

Why File a Birth Injury Lawsuit?

A birth injury lawsuit provides essential legal recourse when medical negligence changes your child's life forever. Filing a claim is not about punishing honest mistakes but about holding healthcare providers accountable for serious breaches of care standards.

Key reasons to pursue legal action include:

• Access to specialized care: Settlements can fund cutting-edge treatments, therapies, and medical equipment not covered by insurance.
• Lifetime financial protection: Many birth injuries require lifelong care, often costing millions of dollars over a child's lifetime.
• Emotional closure: The legal process validates your experience and acknowledges the wrong that occurred.
• Prevention of future harm: Your lawsuit may prompt hospitals to improve safety protocols, potentially protecting other families.
• Family stability: Compensation helps prevent the financial strain that often contributes to marital stress and family breakdown.

Without legal action, families often face overwhelming medical debt, career sacrifices, and reduced quality of life. A successful birth injury claim can transform these challenges into a future where your child receives the best possible care and opportunities.

Common Birth Injuries That We Regularly See in Our Cases

Birth injuries resulting from medical negligence can profoundly impact both mother and child, often with lifelong consequences. When these injuries occur due to substandard care, families deserve compensation.

Birth Injuries to Mother

Maternal birth injuries can range from physical trauma to life-threatening conditions:

• Suture injuries: Improper stitching causing pain, infection, or reopening of wounds.
• Perineal tears: Severe tearing (3rd or 4th degree) that may cause long-term incontinence or pain.
• Pre-eclampsia complications: Failure to diagnose or properly manage dangerous blood pressure conditions.
• Organ damage: Injuries to the bladder, uterus, or other organs during delivery.
• Postpartum hemorrhage: Excessive bleeding due to failure to identify risk factors or delayed intervention.
• C-section complications: Infections, blood clots, or surgical errors during cesarean deliveries.

In tragic cases, maternal mortality may result from severe negligence, leaving families devastated and children without mothers.

Birth Injuries to Child

Infants can suffer various injuries during birth, many with permanent consequences:

• Brain damage: Hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) from oxygen deprivation.
• Cerebral palsy: Motor disability affecting movement, posture, and coordination.
• Brachial plexus injuries: Including Erb’s palsy and Klumpke’s palsy, affecting arm and hand function.
• Facial paralysis: Nerve damage causing partial or complete facial paralysis.
• Skull fractures: From improper use of delivery instruments or excessive force.
• Spinal cord injuries: Resulting in partial or complete paralysis.
• Developmental delays: Cognitive impairments resulting from birth trauma.
• Shoulder dystocia: Complications when shoulders become stuck during delivery.

Understanding the Types of Compensation Available for Birth Injury Claims in New York

When pursuing a medical malpractice claim for a birth injury in New York, the damages you seek will fall into three primary categories: economic damages, non-economic damages, and, in rare cases, punitive damages. Unlike many states, New York does not impose caps on these damages, allowing victims and their families to pursue full and fair compensation for their losses.

Economic Damages

Economic damages aim to compensate birth injury victims and their families for tangible financial losses directly related to the injury.

These may include:

• Medical expenses, including hospital stays, surgeries, medications, and ongoing therapies.
• Lost wages, covering past, present, and future income lost due to the injury.
• Costs for assistive devices and medical equipment needed for the child's care.
• Funeral and burial expenses, in cases where the birth injury tragically results in loss of life.

These damages ensure that extensive medical care does not financially burden families and the support their child may require.

Non-Economic Damages

Non-economic damages address the intangible and deeply personal impacts of a birth injury.

These losses, while not tied to financial expenses, profoundly affect the victim and their family, including:

• Pain and suffering for both the child and their loved ones.
• Loss of consortium, recognizing the strain placed on familial relationships.
• Disfigurement, accounting for permanent physical injuries.
• Loss of enjoyment of life, when a child’s ability to experience normal childhood activities is compromised.
• Emotional distress, acknowledging the psychological toll of the injury.

These damages reflect the life-altering impact of a birth injury beyond financial costs.

Proven Results: Our Birth Injury Case Victories

Our birth injury attorneys have secured life-changing compensation for families throughout New York. Our track record shows our commitment to holding negligent providers accountable while ensuring financial support for children's future care.

• $6.4 million recovery: Secured for a child who suffered brain damage during delivery due to improper monitoring and delayed C-section.
• $4.96 million settlement: Obtained for a family whose infant developed cerebral palsy due to a delayed C-section.
• $4.4 million recovery: Negotiated for a brain-damaged infant after a 45-hour labor, despite the hospital destroying crucial evidence.

We combine medical knowledge, litigation experience, and compassionate representation to secure maximum birth negligence compensation for our clients.

Seeking Compensation for Birth Injury in NY: Steps to Take

When you work with Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Firm, we handle your medical negligence claim on your behalf.

The steps we take will generally include:

• Lawyer consultation: We will review your case and collect basic information.
• Case investigation: We will thoroughly investigate the incident and build your case using evidence and medical experts.
• File claim: We will file your claim for compensation when the case is ready.
• Negotiate for maximum compensation: We will aggressively pursue the highest compensation payout for your claim.

If we can't reach a settlement, we will sue at-fault parties in court to get you the compensation you deserve.

Is There a Time Limit on Making a Birth Injury Claim?

The statute of limitation for medical malpractice cases is 30 months or 2.5 years from the date of the injury if the victim is an adult. When the victim is a child in medical malpractice cases, claims for minor children have a deadline of either 10 years after the patient is injured or 30 months after the injured patient turns 18, whichever comes first.

Additionally, this extension of the time limits to file a malpractice claim can be combined with other extensions. Thus, if a foreign object left inside a child were discovered at age 12, the rule regarding minor children would take precedence over the normal one-year deadline for a malpractice claim.

How Much Will It Cost the Family to File a Birth Injury Claim?

Like most personal injury attorneys, we work on a contingency fee basis — meaning you only pay if we win your case. Our fee is a percentage of the compensation you receive, ensuring that families will have 5-star representation and can seek justice without the financial risk.

We have spent three generations helping families and their children who have suffered a birth injury. An example of the type of work we do for our clients is when Managing Partner Bradley Zimmerman and Partner Chris Nyberg achieved a $7.5 million settlement days before trial for an infant who was brain damaged at birth due to the failure of the obstetrician to perform an emergency c-section. Our attorneys were able to convincingly demonstrate, through world-renowned experts and by utilizing radiographic 3-D imaging, that the pattern of injury on the MRI taken during the newborn admission was the result of hypoxic events (i.e., lack of oxygen to the brain) occurring during the course of the labor.